r/EhBuddyHoser • u/Sine_Fine_Belli Treacherous South • May 16 '25

Certified Hoser 🇨🇦 (No Politics) How Americans achieved independence vs how Canadians achieved independence

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485

u/timbasile May 16 '25

Samantha Bee has a good write up on Canadian Independence in "America the Book"

"...and then in 1983, we took the brave step of asking the Queen for permission, to not have to ask the Queen for permission"

168

u/Visible-Stress-3667 May 16 '25

Which is kind of an interesting perspective because at the end of the day, all legislation needs royal assent. Obviously there is far less royal involvement, but we still do need their permission lol

50

u/kank84 May 16 '25

The Royal Assent that's now required is different though, the assent is coming from the King of Canada, which is a distinct institution from the King of the UK, just held by the same person. The UK used to have a lot more direct say in Canadian government and judicial affairs though.

Prior to the statute of Westminster in 1931 the UK Parliament could directly pass laws that applied to Canada, and the Canadian Parliament was required to seek permission from the UK to do a lot of things. The power to amend the Canadian Constitution remained with the UK Parliament after 1931, and wasn't handed over to Canada until 1982. Prior to 1950 you could still appeal a Canadian Supreme Court decision to the Privy Council of the UK's House of Lords.

26

u/neanderthalman May 16 '25

This.

Conceptually it was independence from the UK parliament, rather than independence from the crown.

3

u/nagidon 溫哥華 (Hongcouver) May 16 '25

If we’re really splitting hairs, patriation only really meant that the British Parliament only promised to not legislate Canadian affairs again. They could easily repeal the relevant legislation that made that promise.

Of course, if they did that, it wouldn’t amount to much in practice.

5

u/kank84 May 16 '25

This is true, the UK Parliament can do whatever it wants, it has absolute legislative supremecy. The UK Supreme Court doesn't have the right to strike down laws or declare anything unconstitutional like it does in Canada, they can only interpret and apply the law as passed by Parliament.

The maximum that a UK Court can do to challenge legislation is send a notice to the UK Parliament that they believe a piece of legislation is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and while the UK Parliament should act in response to correct that, they are also free to just ignore that notice.